Sam Fletcher
OGJ Online
HOUSTON, Feb. 5 -- Oil and gas facilities -- especially offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico -- are vulnerable potential targets for anyone who wants to cripple the US economy or military, said an ex-Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) operative who was trained in such attacks.
Ronald H. Relf of the Pittsburgh-based Risk Mitigation Group said Tuesday he witnessed the vulnerability of offshore facilities as a young member of a special SEAL unit who spent "a lot of time in the middle of the night under gulf platforms," training in how to attack or retake such targets in the mid-1970s.
"We were damn good at infiltration," he said. The SEAL team would make nighttime free-fall parachute jumps into gulf waters and swim to distant targets "so that people on a platform or rig don't even hear the aircraft that brought us."
"We were about 25 years ahead of our time in thinking about combating terrorism," Relf told OGJ Online. "Even now at 50, I could out and take over an offshore rig with four or five guys."
Sometimes even a special Navy unit can be surprised, however. Relf remembers one night when his unit was "half-way up" the exposed jacket of an unmanned platform when a vessel came out of the darkness and tied up to the same facility. "We were wondering, 'Who are these people and how did they find us?' It wasn't until the people aboard started putting lines in the water that we realized it was a fishing boat," he said.
If oil companies truly want to secure their offshore facilities against possible attack, Relf said, "I don't think they can continue to allow fishing boats to come in and tie up to platforms. But that may be a problem. It is open public water out there."
That same issue recently was discussed at a meeting of representatives from the Offshore Operators Committee, US Coast Guard, commercial fishermen, and other industry groups in New Orleans. Fishermen at that meeting expressed concern over any ban against boats tying up to platforms that serve as artificial reefs in the otherwise featureless gulf waters (OGJ Online, Feb. 4, 2002). That group plans additional meetings on safety and anti-terrorist measures.
As part of a panel of four security specialists at the International Association of Drilling Contractors' annual safety meeting Tuesday in Houston, Relf suggested that companies establish "concentric rings of security" around their offshore facilities, shore bases, and headquarters to eliminate gaps through which a terrorist attack might penetrate.
Aircraft and marine vessels -- "anything that floats" -- remain attractive targets for terrorists, said David Lattin, operations director in the Americas for the Control Risks Group LLC, London. Spanish authorities recently thwarted a Basque plot to place a car bomb aboard a ferry in that country, he said.
Offshore operators need "a more effective filter" rather than just "letting anyone with a company uniform or identification badge board a helicopter or boat" to go offshore, said Relf.
Attacks on just a few offshore platforms or rigs in the Gulf of Mexico would force virtually all companies to shut down operations until security was restored, choking off a major portion of total US oil and gas production, he said.
Relf is particularly concerned about possible attacks on some of the prolific deepwater wells that are producing at high rates through tension-leg platforms in the gulf. The resulting pollution from such an attack would be disastrous to both the environment and the industry, he said.
An attack on the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only US unloading facility for deepwater tankers, could disrupt oil imports into this country, Relf said.
But terrorists wouldn't necessarily have to go offshore to sabotage the movement of oil and gas to US markets. A chemical or biological attack at "a valve center" that controls interstate movement of oil and gas supplies also would be devastating to both the US economy and its war effort, Relf said.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected]